A Human Heart
by DrachenRose
Summary: Set in the year 2064. Moriarty starts another game, this time with severe repercussions for John Watson: he doesn't survive. But does it have to be permanent? And even if Sherlock can "bring John back to life," (in a manner of speaking) should he?
1. Chapter 1

17 Jan. 2064 - 06:34 GMT

"We know not what it is, dear, this sleep so deep and still;  
The folded hands, the awful calm, the cheek so pale and chill;

The lids that will not lift again, though we may call and call;

The strange white solitude of peace that settles over all."

—Mary Mapes Dodge

"The only danger in Friendship is that it will end."

—Henry David Thoreau

No.

No, no, no no no.

I refuse.

Illogical.

Impossible.

But it is, whether I like it or not.

I failed you.

Shut up.

I don't care.

It doesn't matter.

Nothing matters, not anymore. Now that he is-

Now that John is-

John Hamish Watson.

The one who listened.

The one who cared.

The only one to ever care about me, the only one capable of caring about someone like Sherlock Holmes: the freak, sociopath, machine.

Now he is-

I am alone.

Again.

I don't want to be alone.

Please come back, John.

I miss you.

I'm afraid of being alone again.

I tried so hard but I couldn't keep you here.

My best wasn't enough. It always was before. You thought it was enough before.

Then it wasn't. And now you're-

I miss you.

I think I am broken.

My chest has been crushed in. I'm not sure how.

They said I didn't have a heart

But what if I did?

I think it is gone now. Did you take it with you when you left? Maybe my chest is caving in where it used to be.

It didn't hurt before you, not like this. Why does it hurt to be alone now?

Now I know what I am missing.

I miss you.

How can I miss you when I am holding you? It shouldn't be possible.

But it is.

And I do.

I miss you.

Please come back.

I miss you.

Please come back.

I miss you.

Please...

John Hamish Watson

Please John I miss you come back

Please I miss you John come back

Come back I miss you please John

John please

John...


	2. Chapter 2

17 Jan. 2064 – 07:53 GMT

"My grief lies all within,  
And these external manners of laments...  
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief  
That swells with silence in the tortured soul.  
There lies the substance."

—Shakespeare

"His pain was too great. He begged me for the simple mercy of death. And I could do nothing else but help him leave a world that had become a sleepless, tortured nightmare to him."

—Robert D. Andrews

Sherlock didn't know how long he sat there, John in his arms. Enough time for Mycroft to come, at any rate. Likely he had not been far away, had probably predicted this and prepared for it. Bastard. It seemed everyone had accepted that Sherlock would fail except the man himself. John had spoken as though it were already determined. Tony left after John lost consciousness the previous night. Said that he was going to "let you be alone with him." Oxymoron, he thought at the time. Couldn't be alone when he had John; was only _not_ alone when he was with John. And it was still true, because he didn't have John, not really. John was dead.

Mycroft saw fit to invite himself in. His younger brother didn't move, and made no sign of acknowledgement or recognition. He cleared his throat once, twice, and was finally rewarded with a glance in his general direction. But that was somehow more alarming—Sherlock's eyes seemed blank, empty; he saw but he didn't observe. There wasn't even a flicker of life as they landed on Mycroft. He hadn't been crying like most people would, but his brother was not most people. This was a bad sign indeed… He hadn't known his sibling had been quite so attached to the army doctor. Perhaps this was for the best, then. He had told Sherlock time and time again that caring is not an advantage, but had he listened? Mycroft had been right. As usual. Now that the man was dead, his little brother might finally see some sense. He couldn't directly say such a thing—that would certainly get him into trouble—but they would both know. And that was enough for Mycroft. "My sincere condolences for your loss, dear brother." For the loss, certainly. He didn't _enjoy_ seeing Sherlock hurt, even though it was good for him.

_My sincere condolences for your loss, dear brother._ The words somehow filtered in through the never-ending thoughts of _John, John, John_ and he turned them over in his head a few times before realizing their meaning. His eyes flicked up, recognizing his brother and then back down just as quickly. Mycroft never seemed to go away, but John would be gone soon, too soon. They would take him away, to a special room where he would be burned— It was better to look at Mycroft. "What do you want?" His voice surprised him, it came out worn and harsh. Had he been yelling? He wasn't sure. Mycroft would know, he kept those bloody cameras in the flat. There had been even more recently, when he had been trying to keep John alive.

"I came to give you something," said the invader in question.

_The bloody nerve_, Sherlock thought. "I don't want anything you can give me," he rasped. "Can't you just leave me alone for once in your life?" His tone was dull. It didn't even sound like his voice any more, he noted apathetically. Perhaps that was what happened when one lost one's heart—all of the life just drained out of the hole. He found that he wouldn't mind terribly.

Mycroft frowned. "It belonged to John." In a manner of speaking. At least the statement would capture his brother's attention. Sherlock visibly perked up at the mention of John's name, if only slightly. "I've his memories on this," he said, pulling out a small silver device. Highly illegal, yes, but Mycroft Holmes could get away with a great deal of things if he so chose. The British government was lucky that he was honest, for the most part. The recording device was one of two exceptions to the law over the course of his career. Both involved Sherlock.

It seemed he did indeed want something Mycroft could give him. _There's a first time for everything._ Sherlock reached out for the device, still cradling John's head in his other arm. He couldn't seem to let go; his hand was glued in John's hair, tangled in the fine strands. John's hair held no warmth other than what Sherlock himself radiated. If he shifted his hand, it would be cold…

Flattening his lips in displeasure, Mycroft stepped around the coffee table and placed the device in his brother's hand. "You're going to have to move eventually." To use the recorder, if nothing else.

Sherlock wanted to shake his head, to childishly deny it. He never wanted to move again. This particular spot was where he had been just before John had died, and if he stayed it seemed like maybe things would go back to how they had been before. Before Moriarty's cruel little game. Before the month of pain John had to suffer in hopes he might survive, in hopes Sherlock was good enough to keep him alive. He wasn't, it turned out. _All the king's horses and all Mycroft's men couldn't put John Watson together again. _But he only had one of Mycroft's men, as part of the rules of the game. He could choose one person to help him. Only one, supposedly the best engineer in the world.

But The Great Sherlock Holmes and The-World's-Best-Engineer Tony couldn't fix one man. One rather small army doctor, who now lay broken and torn to bits in his friend's arms. It would have been kinder to let him go the first day, when he was dumped on the curb of 221 Baker Street still bleeding from the heart transplant. Sherlock remembered the mocking phone call.

"_I've given him a metal heart, just like yours. Twinsies! But that's not really true, is it? It won't last long, thirty-one days. Oops, thirty. I forgot. But if you try and take it out, it'll poison him. Isn't that just rude of me? I couldn't resist. You'll just have to…work around it."_ I can't do this, and you know it. This isn't my area. _"You can have one helper, anyone you choose. Except me, of course. That wouldn't be fair, now, would it?" _A maniacal giggle from the other end of the line. _"Thirty days, Sherlock. Twenty nine…twenty eight…" _Sherlock hung up.

An entire month of pain, of surgery, of medication that was never quite enough to wipe away the drawn and tired look on John's face. He was still optimistic, even near the end. And during the final few days, when the optimism had left, he wasn't depressed or upset. He just smiled, quiet and resigned, his eyes sad when Sherlock mentioned something about continuing the next stage of surgery or how it would be a while before John was well enough to help with cases again. He knew. Everyone knew but Sherlock, who purposefully didn't observe the signs and deduce the outcome.

John died quietly, just went to sleep and never woke up. Sherlock had taken to sitting up during the night while his friend slept; waiting in case he was needed. So he was aware of the moment in which John stopped breathing.

At 6:33 in the morning on January 17, year 2064, John Hamish Watson died. C.O.D. was heart transplant failure, Jim Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes Wasn't Good Enough.

All he had left was John's body and memories: both his own and John's now. Memories were just brain waves, to be recorded and translated on a device and turned into pictures and words and sensations in a stimulator. Nowadays everyone could buy cheap memory sticks, deliberately record specific images and plug them into their phone to share with all their friends.

This one was a stealth device, which recorded brain waves of a particular person and sent them to one of Mycroft's lackeys for review. Recordings of all the brain waves meant video, audio, and even some degree of the other three senses. It also recorded thought patterns. Sherlock always wondered how other people thought, what made them so different from him. Now he had the chance to find out, and even better, it was John. John was always the most important one. It seemed fitting that he was the one to be part of this last experiment. A Study in How John Watson Thinks. A Study of What Makes John Watson, John Watson.

He was almost afraid to find out. His best friend was lying dead on the couch, and Sherlock was about to go trolling through his innermost, private thoughts. It seemed wrong, like he should have permission. But that wasn't possible, and this was all he had left. John wouldn't mind, not any more.

Wait.

Wait. He had everything right in front of him. John's memories and how he thought and even his brain. It was the body that wasn't working properly, the body that had failed. So what if he could get a new body?

It gave him an idea. A dangerous sort of idea. The sort of idea that would be considered all sorts of amoral and illegal, but if he could pull it off it wouldn't matter, none of that would matter. _"Could be dangerous."_ How could he refuse?

"I said 'dangerous' and here you are."


	3. Chapter 3

**17 Jan. 2064 – 08:09 GMT**

**"O that 'twere possible,**  
**After long grief and pain,**  
**To find the arms of my true-love**  
**Round me once again!..."**

**—Alfred Tennyson**

**"If I do vow a friendship, I'll perform it**  
**To the last article."**

**—Shakespeare**

_It could be done._ For the first time since John breathed his last, Sherlock's brain began to function properly. He imagined that it started up, rebooted, cogs whirring as it warmed up. _You machine!_ No, _you_ will be, John. It could be done. It _would_ be done. John was his best friend. How could he refuse?

He was going to have to start soon. It had been almost an hour and a half already, who knows what could have been damaged by then? The brain was a delicate thing, and so very human. He couldn't have John without it, certainly. A new body would be one thing; that had been done before. But by now all the experts had agreed: brains could not be reconstructed. No synthetic materials yet created could match their accuracy and efficiency. They were brilliant, really. Nothing worked quite like a human brain. So that would have to be removed, and quickly, if there was any chance of this endeavor succeeding.

Lifting John's shoulders up with one arm, he used the other to spread a thick layer of newspapers and blankets under his friend's upper body. This wouldn't be a completely clean operation, not without the latest hospital tech—and he didn't have the time or authorization necessary to obtain such things. At any rate, he was capable of performing the operation. The detective had spent a great deal of time in labs and mortuaries both during uni and for cases. He fetched his scalpel from the table and took a deep breath—no time for emotions. It's a body, not John. Not anymore.

Hands perfectly steady, Sherlock made the first cut.

**17 Jan. 2064 – 13:37 GMT**

**"I was crying partly because I felt that this was expected of me, partly from genuine repentance, but partly also because of a deeper grief which is peculiar to childhood and not easy to convey: a sense of desolate loneliness and helplessness, of being locked up not only in a hostile world but in a world of good and evil where the rules were such that it was actually not possible for me to keep them."**

**—George Orwell**

**"After desolation, grief brings back our humanity."**

**—Mason Cooley**

It was lucky that he frequently experimented on human body parts for his work. He had the technology to keep things in a sort of stasis—there was some technical term for it that he couldn't be bothered to remember right now—and John's brain would remain in exactly the same condition as it was when placed in the container.

Sherlock sat at the table, staring at it through the opaque lid. Precisely two hours and four minutes ago, it was functioning properly inside of his best friend's skull. Strange, then, that it was on the kitchen table in a glorified jar. He almost wondered why it was there, and then remembered. _I'm not thinking straight, I need to rest._ How could he? John's brain was on the table. He let out a giggle. John's _brain_ was on the _table_. It seemed funny somehow—why was that funny? Brains weren't funny.

But he laughed anyway, he couldn't stop even though his voice sounded wrong and it scared him and John was dead and nothing was funny, nothing at all. Sherlock felt a hand on his shoulder, shaking him, and turned to see Mrs. Hudson looking rather worried. She was saying something to him but he couldn't understand; it was noise, just noise. It was gibberish; it was funny. He was startled to discover that someone was laughing, high-pitched, hysterical laughter. Strange, who was laughing? John was dead, and there was nothing funny.

Oh. It was him. The laugh ended abruptly, was choked to death and became a sob. Sherlock felt himself being pulled into a hug by one of two people from whom he would ever accept such gestures. The other was dead. He clung to Mrs. Hudson and sobbed, like a child. He didn't know how long he lasted before he was utterly spent. She gently led him to bed and tucked him in, running her fingers through his curls and talking to him about anything and nothing until he finally fell asleep.


End file.
